On this site will be posted analyses of popular media productions. These analyses will have to do with determining the underlying meanings of various movies, songs, and certain novels. Methods used to analyze a given production will include exploration of the creators' use of symbolism, allegory, metaphor, etc., and deciphering any arcane or obscure references that it may contain.

The prison ward on which Hannibal Lecter is kept is below ground level, thus suggesting that Lecter (shown at left) is, metaphorically speaking, in Hell, which is where Satan resides. Since Lecter is portrayed as extremely evil, he represents evil itself, and this, taken together with what was just said about him being 'in Hell', indicates that he represents a personification of Satan. Also, note that the 'bal' in 'Hannibal' sounds similar to 'baal', a commonly used name for the Devil; this is further evidence that Lecter represents Satan. Recall the 'quid pro quo' arrangement between Starling and Lecter - this represents Clarice making a 'deal with the Devil' to get information about the serial killer, Buffalo Bill, which will hopefully help the FBI apprehend Bill. Lecter also functions as a metaphorical psychoanalyst for Clarice, with his goal ostensibly being to help her become a mature, complete woman.

Lecter's implied requirement that Starling be polite on her initial approach to him (during their first meeting), is similar to Baba Yaga's requirement that those seeking her aid obey the basic rules of politeness. Since Baba Yaga was female, the indication is that Lecter has a certain amount of 'femaleness' within him. He thus represents a hermaphroditic entity, in particular, an evil hermaphroditic Jew. (Later in the analysis, we will see that an examination of the etymology of the surname 'Lecter', reveals that Hannibal represents a Jew).

Clarice Starling not only represents the Virgin Mary, but she also represents holiness itself: she is an angel, and specifically, a (friendly) angel of death, sent by God to destroy Satan's pupil, Jame Gumb. She desires to become a mature, complete woman. Working with Jack Crawford, Lecter takes advantage of this desire, by setting up a 'situation' within Clarice's psyche whereby she will see it as necessary to confront and defeat Jame Gumb, in order to become a complete woman. Within a certain context, Clarice also represents the Roman Catholic Church.

Jame Gumb (aka Buffalo Bill; shown at above left) represents Lecter's (i.e., Satan's/evil hermaphroditic Jews') 'pupil' or apprentice, in his basement 'Hell'. As suggested by the large amount of stone in Gumb's basement (e.g., the stone wall surrounding the well where he keeps his victims, as shown at above right), Gumb represents certain evil Freemasons. Gumb's skinning of each of his victims, and his creation of a 'suit' from these skins, representing a day of creation, symbolizes an 'evil kingdom' that is being created by Satan/the evil hermaphroditic Jews working with Satan's pupil/evil Freemasons. Gumb desires to usurp Lecter's place as a personification of Satan. Gumb also represents Starling's 'opposite' within the context of Clarice representing the Roman Catholic Church, in that he is extremely evil.

As indicated by the fact that Catherine Martin is, in the scene shown at left, enthusiastically singing along with the rock music hit, American Girl, on her car radio, she represents the 'typical American young woman', or more generally, the public. The kidnapping of her by Jame Gumb, and his planned killing and skinning of her, is to provide the seventh patch of skin for the skin 'suit' he is wear. The addition of this seventh patch to the suit represents a seventh day of creation, except that here, as stated above, it is an 'evil kingdom' that is being created.

Jack Crawford (shown at left) represents a father figure for Starling, in that he seems to her to be such. In the context of the psychoanalysis being done on Starling, Crawford functions as someone on the outside (i.e., someone who is not imprisoned) who helps Lecter with the psychoanalysis.

Clarice Starling's dorm roommate at the FBI academy, Ardelia Mapp, represents, in part, a psychopomp for Clarice Starling, i.e., she functions as a mediator between Clarice's unconscious and conscious mind.

Barney, an orderly in the institution in which Lecter is kept, represents the Christian Holy Spirit: we note that he wears white in the movie (see screencap at left), and the Holy Spirit is often depicted in art as a dove, a bird which is usually white. We also note that Barney in part serves as a guide for Starling, for example, he advises her on how to approach Lecter's cell; the Holy Spirit is sometimes considered to be a guide. (Although Barney represents the Holy Spirit itself, Clarice Starling represents the metaphorical 'presence' of the Holy Spirit, in certain scenes in the movie).

Stained glass representation of the Holy Spirit as a dove, c. 1660. [Image from the Wikipedia 'Holy Spirit in Christianity' page, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.]

We will soon see who Dr. Frederick Chilton represents.

[If you are only interested in viewing the explanation of the film's hidden plot, continue on to part 10 of the analysis. Otherwise, use the buttons below to navigate the analysis.]

Sunday, January 25, 2009

One of the most crucial scenes in the movie occurs when Paxton is in a 'cell' (a special room), chained to a chair and about to be tortured with a chainsaw by one of the 'clients' - a man who has paid money to the owners who run the torture 'service'; these owners have innocent people such as Paxton kidnapped, then confined within a building in which individual areas and rooms are set up for them to be tortured (the rooms typically contain chairs and tables, a variety of torture instruments, manacles and/or ropes, and other items a given client may have requested).

The client starts working on Paxton by cutting off some of his fingers with the (running) chainsaw. Then he backs away from Paxton ten or fifteen feet; next, he begins running toward Paxton with the chainsaw outstretched in front of him. Just before reaching Paxton, however, he slips on some wet blood that is on the floor, and falls; the chainsaw, still running, then lands on top of him and severs his leg. Paxton, taking advantage of the opportunity, frees himself from the chair, then shoots and kills the unfortunate client with a gun which has been lying nearby. He then entices a guard, who has been sitting just outside the room, to come into it, and then he shoots and kills the guard. Note that in this scenario, the tables have been turned – the person who was being tortured now has the upper hand.

Paxton knows he must exit the room disguised, so that he will not arouse suspicion while trying to escape the building, should he encounter any of the torture service employees who earlier brought him to the building. He dons a helmet which has been lying nearby; this particular helmet has two pointed horns on top, and is designed such that it has a lower portion which functions as a mask; thus, when Paxton is wearing it, his face is covered, and therefore, no one who works for the torture service and had earlier seen his face, will recognize him while he's trying to escape. Helmets symbolize invisibility;[a] this fits with Paxton wanting to escape unnoticed.

The song under analysis is Steely Dan's Only A Fool Would Say That (from the album Can't Buy A Thrill). As we have observed, the song addresses John Lennon's hit Imagine, in which the narrator seems to describe how he imagines an ideal world would be; whereas Only A Fool 'responds' to Imagine's narrator, in part by depicting a cynical view of the real world. In part 2 of the analysis, we left off with the part of the Only A Fool lyrics that say, "The man in the street / Draggin' his feet / Don't wanna hear the bad news." As described in part 2, these are references to certain parts of the Beatles' song, A Day In The Life (1967). "Bad news" refers to the part of the Beatles' song that mentions the narrator reading a news article in the paper, about a man shooting himself while sitting at a stoplight in his car.

The next verses of Only A Fool say, "Imagine your face / There in his place / Standin' inside his brown shoes / You do his nine to five / Drag yourself home half alive / And there on the screen / A man with a dream." "Nine to five" and "drag" are additional references to A Day In The Life, in specific, to the part of the Beatles' song in which the narrator is a man who begins by describing his activities upon first awakening for work: "Woke up, fell out of bed / Dragged a comb across my head..." Shortly after this, the man arrives at work: "Found my way upstairs and had a smoke..." Evidently, the narrator of this part of A Day In The Life is a workaday man.

The first five of the above-quoted seven verses of Only A Fool, directly address the narrator of Imagine, i.e., the man imagining an ideal world - the verses are meant to suggest to this man that he'd be viewing things with a more cynical perspective, if he were an 'ordinary' man. (As an aside, "Brown shoes" is a reference to the Beatles' song Old Brown Shoe (1969)). Only a Fool's "And there on the screen / A man with a dream" suggests that when our workaday man gets home from work, he watches TV, and on it, he sees Imagine's narrator, or someone like the narrator. Following this point in Only A Fool, the chorus is repeated (the chorus was deciphered in part 2 of the analysis).

Following the second playing of the chorus, the lyrics of Only A Fool are, "Anybody on the street / Has murder in his eyes / You feel no pain / And you're younger / Then you realize." The first two lines taken together are a 'rebuke' of the 'no killing'/'no wars' aspects of Lennon's narrator's ideal world. "You feel no pain" and "You're younger" are, again with the lyrics of Only A Fool directly addressing Imagine's narrator, meant to suggest that this narrator is too young and naive to realize that there can be no world without war. "Then you realize" implies that once this person (Imagine's narrator) has gotten older, he will see how the real world is, that it is not at all like the one he imagines.

At the end of Only A Fool, the chorus is repeated.

Generally speaking, Only A Fool is an answer to the narrator of Imagine, not an answer to Lennon himself; for John Lennon himself could not have been as naive as his song's narrator. In this respect, the Steely Dan song serves to elucidate the fact that Lennon was knowingly having his narrator depict a naive world-view. One way to think of things is that Only A Fool is, in reality, a 'hint song', in that it suggests that Lennon was only being sarcastic or satirical by having his narrator speak as idealistically as he does. Note that in this scenario, the use of the word "I" in the lyrics of Imagine is the narrator's "I", not Lennon's.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Late in the movie, when Starling phones her supervisor, Jack Crawford, to inform him of her discovery that Gumb is attempting to assemble a suit composed of women's skins, Jack tells her that the FBI has traced Gumb through a sex reassignment center, and that he is on his way to Gumb’s house in Calumet City, Illinois to apprehend him. He tells Starling to continue on with her mission to get more information, which will help convict him once he is captured. But, it is soon realized that Crawford is headed toward an abandoned home, and Gumb is actually in a house in Belvedere, Ohio, where Starling is headed.

Above left: Starling phones Crawford from West Virginia to let him know about her discovery, regarding what Buffalo Bill is doing with his victims. Above right: Crawford responds that the FBI knows Bill's identity and where he lives, and that she is to continue on with her task to try and get information that will help convict him.

Crawford and his men think Jame Gumb is in a house in Calumet City; one of the men rings this house's doorbell (top left screencap). We the audience are next shown a view of a doorbell ringing (top right), and Gumb is then shown listening to the doorbell (above left), but when he answers his door (above right), Clarice Starling is standing there. The bell that Gumb (and the audience) hears is from Starling ringing at his door at the house in Belvedere; the house in Calumet City is empty. One important thing to recognize about this sequence of scenes, in which the point of view switches back and forth between the events at the two different houses – the intention being to confuse and then 'shock' the audience - is that this scenario is intended to 'set up' the audience for the shock and confusion which Clarice herself will experience as she begins to pursue Gumb in his basement, including her having to deal with Catherine Martin.

Above left: Catherine Martin, in Gumb's basement well, shouts at Gumb that she is going to kill his dog if he does not lower a telephone to her. Above right: When Starling arrives in Gumb's basement, she and Catherine have a somewhat frantic interaction.

As shown above, Gumb's dog is small and has white fur, and therefore, it represents Clarice’s childhood lamb (which we recall from the story she tells Lecter in Memphis, she had failed to save). Here in Gumb's house, an event takes place which indicates that, speaking metaphorically, she now saves it: Clarice’s showing up has happened just soon enough for Gumb’s hostage, Catherine Martin, who is standing in the well holding Gumb's dog captive, not to kill it. Also, as mentioned in part 3 of the analysis, Martin being in the well is symbolically analogous to Clarice being in the basement itself. Thus, when Clarice says to Catherine, "Tell that dog to shut up!" she is, metaphorically speaking, silencing her childhood lamb once again (recall that she had tried to silence it so that she would not be caught escaping from her childhood ranch with it).

Starling stands face to face with Gumb, just before shooting and killing him.

After Crawford's group, and other parties, have arrived at Gumb's house, Catherine, holding the dog, is escorted by EMS workers.

Monday, January 5, 2009

Above left: Miggs throws some of his semen on Starling's face while she is walking away from the area of Lecter's cell, after her first interview of Lecter. Above right: A few moments later, after Clarice has gone back and talked to Lecter for a short time, we see another closeup view of her face while she is on her way back to her car after exiting the institution, and absolutely no sign of Miggs' semen remains on her. The assumption the audience is supposed to make is, of course, that she went into a women's restroom prior to exiting the institution and washed it off. The symbolic meaning of showing her clean face and hair is that after the Miggs incident she is 'still a virgin', that is, she is undefiled within some context; this fits with her being a representation of the Virgin Mary.

A later scene than the one discussed above, shows Starling inside the storage unit where Lecter's clues ("yourself" and "Hester Mofet") have sent her. After she has worked her way well inside the unit, with the only light being that from the flashlight she's holding (right-hand screencap above), there is a loud 'clunking' noise that sounds like something heavy being dropped. Starling had left the roll-up entrance door to the unit propped partially open (supported by a car jack, as shown in the left-hand screencap above), after passing through it, but she does not respond to the clunking noise by going over to the door to check it, to see if the noise was due to its falling shut. Instead, Clarice merely continues on her search for clues.

Then later, at Starling's second interview of Lecter, it is casually inferred, by the fact that no mention of the issue is made, that she had earlier had no trouble exiting the unit. What we're supposed to realize here is that the door did in fact slam shut and trap her in the unit, but that something close to a miracle occurred, and allowed her to nevertheless get out of the unit.

The owner of the storage facility and his driver were waiting outside while Starling was in the unit (with the driver in a car, as shown at left), and thus they could, theoretically, have re-opened the door for her, but such an event is never actually shown - the audience is forced to assume that one or more intervening physical events have taken place, but at the same time, we're left with an uncertain feeling as to what, if anything, actually transpired such that Starling could exit the unit.

Note the similarity of the two scene sequences discussed above: the Miggs incident, then Starling's clean face on exiting the institution seemingly being unexplained; and the sound of the storage unit door possibly shutting with Starling inside, then subsequent scenes being shown as if there was never an issue of her getting trapped in the unit. In both cases, the audience is to assume some intervening physical event(s) and at the same time derive a symbolic significance from the fact that no such events are actually shown.

We finished up part 1 of this analysis by interpreting the part of the Only A Fool Would Say That lyrics that go, "A boy with a plan / A natural man / Wearing a white Stetson hat." The next few verses of the song read, "Unhand that gun begone / There's no one to fire upon / If he's holding it high / He's telling a lie." These verses are references to the line "nothing to kill or die for" in Lennon's Imagine (in Imagine's narrator's ideal world, there are no wars or killing).

The next lines in Only A Fool are the chorus: "I heard it was you / Talkin' 'bout a world / Where all is free / It just couldn't be / And only a fool would say that." "You" is used because Donald Fagen (the lead vocalist on Only A Fool) is directly addressing Imagine's narrator here. A "world where all is free" is, of course, another reference to the ideal world suggested in Imagine; and in the last verse is heard another reference to the Beatles' The Fool On The Hill.

The stanza following the first singing of the chorus of Only A Fool begins, "The man in the street / Draggin' his feet / Don't wanna hear the bad news." "Man in the street" refers to the 'average man', i.e., a man who has, for example, a workaday job. The two lines after that are references to the Beatles' hit song A Day In The Life, the final track on their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (released in 1967). In specific, "Draggin'" is a reference to the use of the word "dragged" in the part of the Beatles' song that says, "Dragged a comb across my head", and "bad news" corresponds to the part of the A Day In The Life lyrics that say, "I read the news today, oh boy."

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